Page 97 of The Shattered City

“I’m sorry, Ruby. I’ve tried to fight this, but there’s nothing more I can do. If I don’t take the post, Grandfather will cut me off. I would have no way to support us.”

Because she sensed that Clara was still watching, Ruby forced herself to be calm. She tried to give Theo a brave look, but she could not manage any words of comfort. Not when they both knew the truth. They were still being punished for what had happened in May.

Half-numb, she allowed Theo to lead her farther and farther away from the ship as they followed Clara and Henry through the boisterous crowd that lined the docks. Married. Before the week’s end, if their families had their way.

“I am sorry,” Theo said as they walked a few paces behind her sister. “I had no idea they were keeping this from you.”

“It’s not your fault,” she told him, looking up into his eyes. “We’ll make do. We’ll be together at least.”

“I read your last column in the Post,” Theo murmured a little while later.

“The one about Pompeii?”

He nodded. “It was beautifully done.”

“I was happy with that one,” she said, feeling suddenly wistful for those days in the Mediterranean sun. “It seemed somehow more important than the usual drivel I’d been writing about the width of women’s skirts.”

“The emotion you put into it,” he told her. “The beauty of the land and the people. It’s all there, clear as day on the page how you feel.”

Ruby looked out over the water. She knew exactly what had made that particular article different. She’d been to Italy before, but this time she’d seen Viola everywhere she looked.

“I’m not sure if Viola saw it, but if she had… I think she would have understood,” Theo said.

“I don’t know what you’re—” Her footsteps stopped along with her words. She and Theo had always had honesty between them. “It doesn’t matter if she saw the piece,” Ruby told him with a sigh.

“No?” he asked.

She shook her head, but she couldn’t quite look him in the eye.

“I have an aunt in Edinburgh who would be happy for company,” he told her. “I could get you a ticket on the very next steamer available. You could leave as early as tomorrow. She’d have you as long as you’d like.”

Clara tossed a look back at them, looking more than a little disgruntled that they’d stopped. Theo pulled her along gently.

Ruby understood what he was offering, but she knew that Theo’s aunt was no real answer. Edinburgh was far too cold and gray and damp. Agnes Barclay was a lovely old woman, even if she did smell of the mothballs she used to store her furs, but she wasn’t a solution.

“Are you truly encouraging me to jilt you by sailing away to your spinster aunt mere days before our wedding?” Ruby lifted her hand to her chest in mock horror. “Society would never allow you to forget. The tale would follow you for years.”

“Perhaps… Though it would have to travel across a few hundred miles to find me on the edge of the prairie,” he joked.

“Perhaps you would find some strapping young pioneer woman to bear you sons,” she said, trying to make light of the situation they’d found themselves in.

But her words fell flat. Instead of a joke, the statement sounded more like an accusation. It was unfair and awful of her. It was she who had roped Theo into their agreement and then turned around and kissed another. She was the one who had fallen desperately for someone else. Did he not also deserve the same?

Theo simply looked at her with his usual calm, unflappable kindness.

“Is that what you want?” Ruby asked, surprised to hear her voice breaking.

“What I want is for neither of us to settle,” he told her, his words heartbreakingly kind. “For neither of us to be unhappy.”

She placed her hand on his arm. “I could never be unhappy with you, Theo. A life with you wouldn’t be settling.”

He gave her a knowing look. “Darling…”

Ruby shook her head. “It’s not a lie. The whole idea for the two of us to marry, it was never about settling. It was a way for us to somehow escape from—” From what? From the only lives they’d ever known? Lives that so many would give anything for.

She let out a long, tired breath and released his arm. “What happened to us, Theo? We had such dreams. You with your art and me with… everything.”

“Everything is exactly what I want for you,” Theo told her simply.

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